Daily Independent (Lagos)
Andrew Airahuobhor
2 July 2009
Lagos — Spurred by the failure of the Coastal and Inland Shipping (Cabotage) Act 2003 to enhance indigenous shipping capacity, the House Committee on Marine Transport has embarked on investigation of the waiver application in the law.
Speaking to select journalists in Abuja recently, chairman, House Committee on Marine Transport, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, noted that everything about the waivers was currently under investigation, pointing out that it was the major issue attributed to the failure of cabotage by the committee set up to review cabotage implementation last year. The committee has already submitted its report to the minister of Transport.
"We are investigating everything done about the waiver," Ugwuanyi said, explaining that the committee will not be in a hurry to work on the cabotage implementation review committee report. "We want to study the report of the committee, we won't be in a hurry but we will do it this year. We will equally consult with stakeholders and soon you will see the outcome," he said.
Also, the Senate Committee on Marine Transport had recently called on the Federal government through the Ministry of Transport, to overhaul the implementation apparatus of the Cabotage Act.
Chairman of the committee, Gbemisola Saraki, had noted that, "It appears to be common knowledge that in the past, NIMASA and to a large extent, the Ministry of Transport, had no will to implement the cabotage law and that is probably why it has become waiver rather than cabotage law."
She had said that the implementation of the act by the agency charged with its enforcements was very poor. "Since we agree that the objectives of cabotage have not been met six years after the law was enacted, there is need for a complete overhaul of the implementation apparatus," she said.
Cabotage is a scheme of regulation and legislation, which ensures that vessels used in Nigeria's coastal trade are owned, built and manned by Nigerians. The essence was to guarantee growth and development of indigenous capacity in maritime infrastructure.
Advantages derivable from the law as passed by the National Assembly include prevention of capital flight, generation of employment and tightening of national defense.
Provision for grant of waivers on terms of non-availability was made in the law. It was provided in clauses 12, 13 and 14 that the Minister of Transport may on the receipt of an application, grant waivers in respect of the ownership, manning and building requirements where there are no suitable and available vessels, or no qualified Nigerian officers or crew, or where there is no requisite building capacity.
Clause 15 provided that where circumstances described in clauses 12, 13, and 14 apply, the Minister shall grant a waiver, in the first instance, to a shipping company owned under a joint-venture arrangement between Nigerians and foreigners, and in the second, to any shipping company or vessel registered in Nigeria which has satisfied requisite formalities. These provisions touch in addition to the legal, the political.
There is also the right of 'First Refusal', which means- give it to Nigerians first, if they cannot perform, then you use foreign firms.
The then Transport minister when cabotage came into existence was Abiye Sekibo, who explained then that government introduced waiver options in the cabotage law after taking into consideration that indigenous firms may not have enough capacity.
But he made it clear that this will be applied only when it became clear that Nigerian firms could not provide needed vessels or equipment for any particular service.
During the flagging off of cabotage at the Apapa port quayside, Sekibo had told industry stakeholders that "Waivers are there, but it will not be given when it is to circumvent the law." But about six weeks after the guidelines were introduced; indigenous firms had sour tales to tell about the implementation.
Now, six years after the law became operational, it has become more or less a cabotage of waivers instead of developing indigenous capacity as foreign shipping firms have continued to dominate coastal trade while officials of the relevant government agency vested with the responsibility of monitoring cabotage, allegedly line their pockets with bribes collected from foreign operators to manipulate the law to their advantage.
Earlier in the life of the law, there was the indiscriminate grant of ministerial waivers for ships to discharge their cargo mid-ocean before they are brought to the quay, and not pay shipping and port charges. This had resulted in cargo not going through mandatory inspection, and depriving the government of huge revenue. The public revenue reportedly lost N10 billion Naira to such waivers.
During a stakeholders' forum organised by the cabotage implementation review committee at the NIMASA Resource Centre in Lagos, last year, former minister of state for water transport, John Okechukwu Emeka, observed the illegal operations of foreign firms in cabotage trade.
He had expressed disgust at quantum of requests for waivers he received in services which Nigerians have capacity. He said that he refused to grant any waiver to such requests but was amazed that foreigners still continued illegal operations with impunity.
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